Response of microbial communities to roxarsone under different culture conditions

Roxarsone is a feed additive widely used in the broiler and swine industries that has the potential to contaminate the environment, mainly via the use of poultry manure as fertilizer, which results in release of inorganic arsenic to the soil and water. This study was conducted to investigate roxarsone degradation and the response of the microbial community under different culture conditions using high-throughput sequencing technology. Poultry litter was incubated for 288 h in the presence of roxarsone under light aerobic, dark aerobic, or dark anaerobic conditions. The results showed that roxarsone was completely degraded after 48 h of dark anaerobic incubation, while 79.9% and 94.5% of roxarsone was degraded after 288 h of dark aerobic and light aerobic incubation, respectively. Under dark aerobic conditions with microbial inhibitor sodium azide, roxarsone was rarely degraded during the 288 h of incubation, illustrating that microorganisms play an important role in roxarsone degradation. Microbial community structure was significantly different among various culture conditions. Olivibacter, Sphingobacterium, and Proteiniphilum were the top 3 genera in the control samples. Sphingobacterium and Alishewanella dominated the light aerobic samples, while the dominant microflora of the dark aerobic samples were Acinetobacter spp. Pseudomonas and Advenella were the predominant genera of dark anaerobic samples. This study emphasizes the potential importance of microbes in roxarsone degradation and expands our current understanding of microbial ecology during roxarsone degradation under different environmental conditions.